Hi all, My sister and I made a relatively brief trip up to Montezuma last night. We didn't find anything too special (hence only posting now). We went around the wildlife drive and found almost no shorebirds and not really many waterfowl either, though the cooperative AMERICAN BITTERN at Benning was out along the drive again. We looked from East Road, where highlights were 16 SNOW GEESE (2 juvenile white, 2 adult blue, and 12 adult white) feeding with several hundred Canada Geese, 7 SANDHILL CRANES, a juvenile PEREGRINE FALCON on the mudflat, and the continuing AMERICAN AVOCET visible feeding in Puddlers. Lots of gulls and cormorants still but no other discernible shorebirds other than a few Greater Yellowlegs. We then spent two hours at Van Dyne Spoor Road scanning blackbird flocks for Yellow-headed, but in vain. It certainly could have been out there, we saw a lot of birds. Towards dusk starling became the dominant species visible in the reeds, but thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds came in before that and were visible in large flocks in the distance, and several hundred Common Grackles were also in tight flocks out in the marsh. We saw a few Brown-headed Cowbirds and several RUSTY BLACKBIRDS as well. Other highlights here were Black-crowned Night-Heron, 81 Pied-billed Grebes, Sora, Common Gallinule, Palm Warbler, and flyover American Pipits.
-Jay -- Jay McGowan Macaulay Library Cornell Lab of Ornithology jw...@cornell.edu -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
